May 14, 2005
Ichigo 100% OAV
This being Ichigo 100%, our story opens up with a pervy dream sequence. Of course, none of this is really happening. This is just Manaka Junpei being a typical red-blooded male. Apparently, he’s really out in the middle of the woods, filming a movie with his film club friends. I think a brief introduction is needed for the primary players here. Aside from the weirdo film club guys (and one girl), there are four primary females here. We have Nishino, the blond gal, Satsuki, the loud-mouthed seductress, and Yui, Manaka’s childhood friend.
Anyway, Manaka is assigned to pick up Toujou, the fourth girl, from the bus stop. He goes to pick her up but the buses aren’t scheduled to come for hours and they can’t be late or the filming schedule would be shot to pieces. And being one of “those” anime, the two of them get lost in the woods and are caught in a rainstorm. By now, they’re soaked and they have to dry off, so they find an abandoned house and seek shelter. Toujou grabs hold of Manaka because she’s afraid of thunder. And I’m not sure why she does this, but she jokes that in the movies the actors would use body heat to warm each other in this sort of situation. She sneezes and Manaka tells her to dry off.
Being a guy, his mind is in the gutter and he tries thinking about math instead (of course, this fails miserably). Amid all this awkwardness, he runs out into the rain to “cool off.” When he comes back inside, she dries him off with her towel. Meanwhile, the rest of the group decides to go and look for them. They’d better hurry, because Manaka can’t restrain his instincts for much longer. Okay, the story finally gets serious. Toujou then confesses to Manaka that he makes her feel comfortable and that he stopped her life from being boring. She says that she enjoys so many new things because of him. Later, Toujou falls asleep and Manaka maintains his gentlemanly attitude. Unfortunately, Nishino enters the room and sees the two of them in their… odd position. He thinks that she is taking it the wrong way.
Thankfully, the girls clear it up to a degree amongst themselves in a fan-servicey hot springs scene. Later, one of the guys (for the life of me, I can never remember his name and I’m past 100 chapters in the manga) tells the group about a lovers’ lake that drags into the water any couple that isn’t a close lover. So they form pairs to “test their courage.” Man, how immature and superstitious. I’d rather have Nurikabe-Chiyo-chan. Anyway, Manaka ends up with Nishino and they go off into the woods together.
She wants to hold hands so the “grudge” won’t drag them away. He feels awkward about it and she suddenly turns cold and says she doesn’t believe in such things anyway. There are some bizarre animal sounds and the fright drives Nishino into his arms. They eventually make it to the lake, where they notice a beautiful scene with fireflies. Nishino theorizes that the legend may have been made up to keep outsiders away from this beautiful place so that only lovers could enjoy it. She makes a wish… who knows why.
Suddenly, the film club bursts out of the trees, saying that they tricked the two into doing this so they could film their true expressions for the movie. After this rather uneventful climax, we see the club finish filming their movie. Manaka then asks Nishino what she wished for. She replies that she had wished for the movie to go well. But when he’s out of earshot, she says to herself that it was a matchmaking lake. Hehe. Manaka, you moron.
If you’ve followed the manga, you’d know that the entire story between him and Nishino is Manaka totally not following every chance that she gives him to begin a deeper relationship with her. The manga better than the OAV in many ways, most significantly is the ability to just skip pages and pass over all the fan service so you can get to the meat of the story.